[kiawe_fire]

I can confirm that, anecdotally, this is a fairly accurate portrayal of the reasons for my burnout over the last couple years.

The past several years at my company have been particularly focused on “quick and dirty results” that I predict will end badly, and so far it has every time, leaving me feeling responsible despite management decisions that ignored the consequences and recommendations I laid out. It gets old.

So, shortly before the pandemic, I took initiative to work extra nights and weekends to build a working prototype of a new version of our core internal app, that would ultimately let us go faster and would transform the way we communicate and give us unprecedented flexibility with our clients.

It was passed off as “that’s nice, but let’s get {x} out the door first”. It quickly became apparent that there was, and will always be, another {x} that needs to get out the door before we do anything else.

Having more autonomy and trust that I might actually have a solid grasp on what projects will yield the biggest returns, and being able to commit my focus to those tasks, and being able to hold my managers to the same accountability that they hold me to when making decisions, all would go a long way to improving my job satisfaction AND most importantly, improving our product and our value that we provide to our clients.